Killian is such an amazing kid, but he has such a stubborn personality!  Since he decided to stop talking (mostly, he has about 6 words he uses regularly) since Ellie is born we’ve just ignored the problem and gone on talking to him normally.  But, on advice from the speech pathologist who did a screening on him Thursday (we’ll get results next week) we’re pushing him and while its getting results its a ton of work!  Here was every conversation at our house Thursday and the first half of the day Friday:

K: (signs “cup”)
Me: Killy wants his cup!  (I get his cup and fill it with water) I want you to say “Cup.”
K: Yeah!
Me: Say cup.
K: Yeah!
Me: Say cup.
K: Yeah!
Me: Say cup.
K: Yeah!
Me: Say cup.
K: Yeah!
Me: Say cup.
K: Yeah!
Me: Say cup.
K: Cup
Me: Yay!  Killy said cup!  Here’s your cup! I love it when you use words like a big boy!

And it went and on.  We did this with cup, nuts, boat, cheese, Ellie, Toppins, and bagel Thursday night/Friday morning.  Every time after the whole scenerio he would say the word (or an age-appropriate approximation).  By Friday afternoon he seemed to “get it” and realized that we really wanted him to start talking – and he is!  He’s added a ton of new words – some are truly new and some are words he hasn’t said in months – including: cup, nuts (“nnnnnnn”), cheese (“eeeeeeze”), ball (“baw”), slide (“sliiiiiii”), Ellie (“ellllllllll”)…

Killy is seriously strong-willed and stubborn.  What makes a kid go from saying 50+ words and starting to combine words, to saying almost nothing for 3 months?!  Obviously, having a baby sister is stressful.. but I worry that I just totally played into it by not pushing him to talk, making it even worse.  Now, we’re having to work 20x harder.  Just like the spitting thing: he spit water several months ago, it wasn’t immediatel discouraged, and then it continued daily for months!  (He seem to have gotten out of the habit of it after being sick last week – yay!)  I know some friends/family think I’m too strict with Killy, but I feel like I have to be constantly on guard to keep him from developing these habits/obessions.  I’m not mean about it, I just make sure that innapropriate behaviors are corrected quickly.   Its sooo important to be consistent with him, he has an amazing memory.  If he’s allowed to do something JUST ONCE he expects to be able to do it all the time forever – and that makes sense!  He’s too young to understand that some behavoirs are okay at home, but not in public… so in order to be fair to him we have to have the same expectations at all times.

Some of my online aquaintances at MDC seem really apalled that we’re “pushing” him as far as talking goes.  I can understand their point of view, but its working very well and we’re not upsetting Killy with it.  He loves the attention he gets  from saying words, and he’s started asking for things verbally a lot more in just 2 days!  David and I were talking about it last night, and David suggested that since Killy is a really smart kid we’re going to have more a responsibility to motivate him to acheive.  So often, gifted kids end up coasting through life because they aren’t motivated.  I think that for now at least, between being very bright and being very stubborn, Killy needs a little extra motivation to work on skills that he’s not as interested in.  He can hold his own physically with 5-6 year old kids on the playground – running, jumping, climbing up ladders and such.  He’s been focusing so much on that that he hasn’t been interested in language as much.  And, he figured out that he could get what he wanted almost all of the time by pointing/signing so he hasn’t bothered to work on speaking.  But with just a little prodding, he’s figuring out that speaking and learning new words can be fun, too!

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 11:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.